China furious at US spying

After years of being accused by the US of spying, the Chinese are milking the NSA’s current embarrassment for all it is worth. China has demanded an explanation over reports the US National Security Agency (NSA) had hacked the servers of Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei Technologies, and spied on its senior executives.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said its government was "seriously concerned" about allegations the NSA had created backdoors to spy on servers located in Huawei's headquarters. According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the U.S. agency infiltrated the servers in Shenzhen which Huawei said connected a third of the world's population. The US spooks tracked communications of the Chinese vendor's top executives.

This sort of hacking was far above anything China has been accused. To make matters worse the US had claimed that Huawei gear had backdoors to the Chinese government, when it turned out that the only backdoors were installed by the Americans.

A spokesperson from China's Foreign Ministry, Hong Lei, said during a media briefing Monday the government was concerned about surveillance and spying activities the US had conducted on other countries.

"We require the American side to give a clear explanation and stop such behaviour," Hong said.